


of stone hearts and glass tears

by lawltam



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Azure Moon Spoilers, Gen, Mild canon divergence, Minor Character Death, mild violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:46:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26463622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lawltam/pseuds/lawltam
Summary: Sometimes, the students at the Officers Academy forget that their professor used to be a mercenary. Alternatively, eight times the Blue Lions are scared of Byleth.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 24





	of stone hearts and glass tears

**Author's Note:**

> finally... after one whole ass year in the making (because i procrastinate), here it is!!!!! my feral byleth fic.... this is literally my child please handle with care ;;;

Annette was, to put it simply, apprehensive about this new teacher. It seemed that Rhea had hired her without further investigation of her character, and from what Annette’s seen, it didn’t seem like this new staff member was much to fawn over. Granted, none of the Blue Lions had officially seen her in battle yet, save for Dimitri, but he was always one to honour a knight’s bravery in rather exaggerated tones.

In the very few classes that she’s had with Professor Byleth, Annette was able to tell immediately that the professor wasn’t very adept at teaching and education and the like. It wasn’t anything bad, _per se_ —no, actually, it was awful. How on Earth was Rhea supposed to expect them to actually learn anything if their teacher could barely write straight on the chalkboard?

It was pretty safe to assume that Annette wasn’t quite on Team Byleth, but she would give her a chance… for now. As long as Mercedes didn’t mind, then neither did Annette. Besides, she supposed that the professor’s method of teaching was… fresh, for lack of a better word.

“Keep your guard up around that new Teach,” Claude told her and Ashe when they bumped into him on the way to the dining hall. It was just a few days after Byleth was hired into the Officers Academy, yet early enough for Annette to still be wary about her. “Looks like she’s hiding some stuff under those… what are they? Like, deconstructed sleeves, or whatever?”

“A fashion statement?” Annette supplied.

“Uh, yeah, sure, whatever.” Claude waved his hand dismissively and pulled the pair to the side. “It just seems weird to me that Rhea would just recruit some random woman to be teaching at this school. And isn’t odd that she never talks? Like, at all? She said like, seven words to me after she’d just saved my life as if it was a regular, daily occurrence to her. Just—” Claude sighed. “Keep an eye out, alright?”

“I think she’s just fine, Claude. You’re looking too much into it.” Ashe laughed, putting his hand on Claude’s shoulder in a rather passive-aggressive manner of saying ‘ _you’re fucking crazy dude_ ’. Annette stayed silent. She didn’t want to say it, but for once, she slightly agreed with Claude. The teacher certainly was a mildly suspicious character; she didn’t even know her own age, for Goddess’ sake!

Claude threw his hands up in desperation. “Your deaths. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya!” And then he walked away, probably to find another unsuspecting Blue Lion to spread his propaganda.

“Say, you don’t believe him, do you, Ashe?” asked Annette timidly, pushing open the doors to the dining hall. Caspar was truly feasting his breakfast like a king, with a pyjama-clad Linhardt passed out behind a book, while Dorothea and Leonie were throwing knives at an apple resting on top of Petra’s still head. The usual stuff.

“No, of course not! The professor truly seems like an interesting person, and from what I’ve heard, she knows her way around a battlefield. I wonder when we’ll be able to see her in action.” Ashe grinned and swiped a plate from one of the kitchen staff members.

Annette huffed a breath and mimicked him.

-

“We’re to depart in ten minutes to the Red Canyon to dispel the last of the thieves. Be at the stables with all your stuff.” Byleth told them suddenly one afternoon. It was almost a full moon since they’d been under Byleth’s tutelage, and to say that they’ve improved would be a whopping understatement. Before, Annette could barely cast a fire spell without being a hazard to herself and those around her. Now? Well, she’d completely moved on from fire to thunder, but still!

When Annette re-emerged from her room, spellbooks tucked safely in her leather bag, Mercedes stood, waiting. “Annie, let's go together!”

“Oh, of course, Mercie,” Annette looped her arm around Mercedes’s right one, “though I wished you’d told me you were waiting, I’d have hurried up a bit.”

“Don’t worry about it. I didn’t wait that long anyway, I’m sure the professor won’t mind if we’re just a tad late.” Mercedes smiled, and the tension in Annette’s shoulders faded.

“You’re late. By sixteen seconds. Everyone’s already on horses.” Byleth glanced at them, then at the stables, where most have already mounted their stead, then back at the pair. “Go on, then.”

 _Yeesh_. Annette hurried to mount her horse (with some aid from Ingrid.) That was… awkward, to say the least. Annette looked at her teacher: eyes sharp, lips moving in the rhythm of commands and orders, body relaxed. There was something that changed about her in the ten minutes (and sixteen seconds, Annette thought bitterly) that had passed. The shedding of a professionally unqualified teacher and the rebirth of an experienced and nimble mercenary had happened right before her eyes.

Annette shivered at the difference. How could she forget? The professor, in terms of field experience, was quite possibly the most distinguished member of the whole of Garreg Mach. If Annette were to do anything wrong, then Byleth would have her head (if she hadn’t already lost it.) 

When they finally arrived at Zanado, Byleth immediately commandeered them to their starting positions, not risking dawdling of any sort. She placed Annette a few feet away from Felix, who seemed to be the calmest that Annette had ever seen him in her life.

“You’re not nervous? Like, at all?” She whispered to him, trying to don a mask of bravery despite her trembling hands. She could hear Ingrid from her spot next to Ashe, the two of them conversing about their strategies.

“Even if I were, I’d be stupid to show it. The enemy wouldn’t hesitate to take advantage of it.” Felix glanced at her shaky knees, then back at her face. “If you happen to trip, I won’t save you.”

“Thanks,” replied Annette sarcastically, suddenly having to urge to light Felix on fire, “how reassuring.”

The ghost of a smile flickered on Felix’s lips, and Annette briefly thought she was hallucinating. “Let’s go, now.”

She worked well with Felix—better than she would’ve expected. There wasn’t much need for communication between the two of them, both seemingly able to read each other’s next moves and act correspondingly. She looked at him, watching him wipe the blood off his sword, and the sight made something icky crawl up her arms.

Felix must’ve felt her looking at him, so he met her eyes. “So, who’s next?”

“I… I don’t know. Some people hiding behind the debris, I think.” She couldn’t tear her gaze off the smears of red on Felix’s sleeve, some streaks darker than others. The metallic smell itself was almost enough to make her gag. “You’re alright?”

“‘M fine. Come on now, we don’t have time to waste.” Felix marched onwards, stepping over the corpse of a thief. Annette watched him and followed his lead. From the corner of her eye, she saw movement, probably just another student—Sylvain, most likely. But then a shadow leaped from behind a tree, a metal glint reflecting off a weapon in their hands, towards Felix.

Annette almost fell, stumbling for the first spellbook she touched, and blindly cast a spell, too shaky to carefully aim. The figure froze up and fell to the ground in convulsing gasps and sharp shudders, then ceased movement entirely. Felix looked at her, then at the corpse, then back at her.

“Thanks…” He murmured, shoulders stiff as a board, then turned his back and continued to walk.

Annette was frozen in her spot, breath caught in her throat. The air smelled of singe, and it rose goosebumps upon Annette’s fair skin. Whatever adrenaline was pumping through her veins had dialled down to a buzzing roar in her ears. She was shaking, she realized, when she glanced at her hands and the floor seemed to vibrate.

“I knew you could do it.” Byleth’s voice snapped her out of her stupor, and Annette looked up to meet the eyes of the wandering mercenary. Byleth’s clothes were cut in certain spots, but the biggest mess was the slashes of blood adorning her hands and arms, spirals of red twisting into each other. Byleth looked at her with kind eyes, almost warm and motherly, and Annette felt so conflicted that she wanted to puke. How was her teacher so comfortable with taking lives? Thief or not, their enemies had families, and loved ones, and Annette had just ripped it all apart with just a single spell.

Annette felt her stomach lurch with disgust, or regret, or complete unease. And yet, her teacher, the one woman whom she had to trust for the following years, was hardly fazed.

A chill ran down Annette’s spine and rose the hairs on the back of her neck. A mild sensation of rest that felt much like a calm before a storm. It cooled around her arms, grazed over her collarbones and set itself in a vice-grip around her neck—the choking hold of fear.

She smiled back and forced her anguish back down her throat, the emotion leaving a taste of bile. “Thanks, Professor.”

***

Ingrid wouldn’t quite say that she was particularly fond of the new professor, but, at the very least, she had her respect. Although Byleth might not know her way around a classroom with a piece of chalk between her fingers, she certainly held her ground on the battlefield. Ingrid used to think that she herself was the prime knight—much better than Sylvain, which was good enough for her—yet now, compared to the mercenary with years of experience on her blood-stained belt, Ingrid couldn’t help but feel like she was coming up just a bit short.

“Say,” she said one day, wooden lance placed comfortably in her calloused hands. Felix faced her, sharp eyes darting for any openings, but Ingrid wasn’t dumb; he always had a rather spoiled habit of feigning with his right hand before switching his sword to the other. She remembered the first day she’d learned he was ambidextrous: it was funny, really, because she caught him and Sylvain holding hands under the desk, with Sylvain to his right and forcing him to write with his left hand. “What do you think of the professor? After all, it’s been a few months that she’s been teaching us, and—”

“I will do whatever it takes to defeat her in a sparring match,” Felix pounced for the feign, and Ingrid deflected the strike from her right with the handle of her lance. She grinned at the rather annoyed expression on his face. “She’s a worthy opponent and even more as a war leader. She earns my respect.”

Ingrid stayed quiet. She parried Felix’s sword and responded with a quick jab of her own—a miss, of course. They sparred for quite a bit until Ingrid’s arms were full of lead and her legs, sand.

“Why did you ask?”

“Hm?” Ingrid looked up from her bottle to see Felix eyeing her intently. “Ask what?”

“Earlier. About the professor.” He stood up and tossed both training weapons in their respective bins. Ingrid muttered a word of thanks.

“Oh,” Her gaze dropped to her hands, bony and thin as they were. “I don’t quite know. She seems to be settling well here, but…”

“...But? Spit it out already, would you?”

Ingrid stayed quiet for a long moment, stretching out the silence as far as she could—at least until she could gather the thoughts that have been straying on her mind for quite some time now. Felix growled. “Ingrid, what’s gotten you so antsy? You’re not the type to stay quiet about something.”

“Saints, Felix, would you shut it for a moment?” Ingrid snapped, fists clenching in her lap. The words that she’d attempted to stutter suddenly slipped through her fingers like water, and her tongue retained its calm. “Nevermind. Forget I said anything. Now, come on, then. We don’t want to miss dinner, do we?”

Her answer was greeted with silence, and Ingrid let out a relieved breath. She wasn’t quite sure if she wanted to really divulge her thoughts to Felix, of all people. It would wait another time, she supposed.

-

“Bandits are supposedly going to raid the Holy Mausoleum. At least, that’s what we suspect.” Ingrid told Dorothea, both girls lounged in the former’s room. “It’ll be the only unsupervised area during the ceremony, so the professor assumed it would be the most likely place for an attack.”

“She sure is impressive, your teacher, isn’t she?” Dorothea laughed lightheartedly; the words seemed to be rather friendly, and should even have been taken as a compliment, but the comment rested in Ingrid’s gut, twisting and turning. She wasn’t usually one for uncertainty, but Byleth was somehow able to wrestle her previous calm and collected demeanour into a pulp.

Dorothea must’ve noticed her silence, so she said, “Ingrid, sweetie, is there something wrong?”

The sound of her name pulled her out of her trance, and she looked up to the brunette. “Yes, sorry, I’m fine, it’s just—I’ve got a lot on my mind as of late.”

“Penny for your thoughts, my love.” She patted the space next to her, hairbrush in hand, and Ingrid scooted closer and turned her back to her. Dorothea started combing through her hair, and Ingrid felt the tension in her shoulder ease away with every stroke.

“It’s just that… Professor Byleth is—how to say? She’s the type of person I wouldn’t want to let my guard down when she’s nearby.”

“Is that so? The way I see it, a student should trust their teacher. Do you not?”

“I do!” The quick answer almost started Ingrid, but she found that she wasn’t lying at all. “As a teacher, she’s incredibly reliant, and even on the battlefield as well! She knows exactly what she’s doing and she doesn’t hesitate to help any of us.”

“...But?”

“But,” continued Ingrid, wincing a bit when Dorothea tugged particularly roughly at one of the knots in her hair, “there’s something in the way she fights. Now, I know that we’re all here to become knights and so forth, and that we must become accustomed to death and killing, but when the professor does, there’s something almost…” Ingrid paused slightly, at a slight loss of words. “It almost makes me feel like she might attack _me_ next.”

“Oh my,” replied Dorothea, rather taken aback. The silence hung momentarily between them, before the Black Eagles student continued, “I don’t think that this is something you can fix if you talk to _me_ about it. Have you ever considered explaining your discomfort to your teacher?”

“I have,” admitted Ingrid, sheepishly rubbing at her arms and suddenly feeling shy. It wasn’t as if the thought had never crossed her mind, but she would brush it away as quickly as it surfaced. She was never one to bark back at authoritarian figures. “But I don’t think I could ever do it. She’s almost… unapproachable.”

“There’s no point in not trying, Ingrid,” said Dorothea, and deep down, Ingrid knew she was right. Yet, she also knew that she didn’t quite have the guts to ever do it. She doubts that she could ever truly go up to her professor and boldly state, to her face, _“I worry for my life when I’m in your care!”_

“Yeah,” said Ingrid, lips pulling downwards into a frown, “I know.”

-

The Holy Mausoleum was bigger than Ingrid had thought, although, to be fair, she wasn’t quite sure what she expected in the first place. Her grip on her lance tightened, and she glanced to the side, watching Annette fidget with her casting gloves. “How are you feeling, Annette?”

She squeaked, clearly caught by surprise, and almost dropped a leatherbound book with a lighting bolt carved on the front. “Oh! Ingrid, I hadn’t noticed you.”

“I’ve been standing here for the last four minutes.”

Annette brushed over her comment. “I’m doing fine, I think. A bit nervous, if anything. This is a closed space, and I’m most proficient with my fire spells. The air circulation here doesn’t seem too great.”

“Annette, please don’t give us carbon monoxide poisoning.”

“Well, there isn’t much I can control!” Ingrid laughed at Annette’s slight whine, but their moment of ease was abruptly cut off when the professor commanded them to their starting positions.

“This won’t be like the mock battles you’re all so used to. This is real, a matter of life and death. I will not accept error. Lady Rhea expects us to execute this mission flawlessly, and I’m not one to disappoint. If you feel faint or lightheaded, let me—or Mercedes—know. We’ll patch you up and send you right back.” A smile briefly split in between the cracks of Byleth’s strict expression, and Ingrid recognized a slight fondness in her eyes.

The sight almost made her queasy, but Ingrid just couldn’t explain why. She shuddered, and the grip on her lance tightened. She could feel Annette’s worried glance, but she ignored it and kept her eyes straightforward. There wasn’t much of a use to express her worries to her right before the start of a mission. And, she would most likely forget about her feelings of disquiet in the heat of the fight; after all, a battlefield is no place for hesitation and uncertainty.

-

Ingrid was about to die, she was almost certain of it. Standing before her was the leader of the Western Church group, and judging by the lack of trembling in his gloved hands, this wouldn’t be his first time killing someone with a black magic spell.

How stupid could she have been, to charge so recklessly like that? The mage had seen her from miles away and knocked the lance out of her hands before she could do so much as swing at him. She wasn’t quite sure what had driven her to do such a thing; perhaps it had been cockiness or the sweet, tempting smell of opportunity. Either way, she fucked up.

Her eyes darted around. Felix and Sylvain had already retreated, letting themselves get tended to by Mercedes. For once, Ingrid felt dumber than Sylvain; at least he knew which battles to pick. Ashe and Annette were holding off the enemy reinforcements with Dedue right beside them, while Dimitri and the professor were still fighting their way to Seiros’ tomb.

She was going to die here, Ingrid was absolutely certain, when she realized she was surrounded, and her lance was ten feet away.

She expected the blow to come at any minute. What she hadn’t expected was an arrow shooting right past the mage’s head, and for large, gloved hands wrap themselves around her forearm and forcibly yank her away from danger’s path. Ingrid could only watch as Dimitri knocked back the surrounding enemies and the professor charged at the group’s leader, sword in hand.

Ingrid couldn’t quite see, but the mage had pulled out a rather peculiar looking sword from the tomb, but the professor had managed to get her hands on it and deflected a rather hasty-looking fire spell. The sword glowed almost ominously, and Ingrid was vividly reminded of the tales her father used to tell her about the magic lance of the Galatea family that’s been passed down from generation to generation. Something about it being one of the legendary Heroes’ Relics, but Ingrid never thought she’d ever have the chance of seeing one with her own eyes.

The mage, desperate as he was, cast a barrier, which was all the invitation that the professor needed to strike with all her might, and shattered the weak spell. Then she killed him, almost too easily, with a large upwards slash that ripped his chest undoubtedly into irreparable shreds.

Ingrid froze. Something muscular and tight coiled around her body and spirit, preventing her from moving. Her throat closed up, and suddenly she couldn’t breathe, because before her was a _demon_ , dressed in greys and donning the air of a caring professor. Was Ingrid supposed to feel safe in _her_ care? What if, one day, the demon finds itself in a flux of negative emotions and turns against them all? Who was to say that that demon wouldn’t devour them all in its inevitable pursuit for power? Who would stop it?

Her feelings of danger persisted; she still felt as though she was going to die. Right here. Right now. Emerald eyes darted from side to side, and, alas, her lance was still too far from her reach; it simply wasn’t possible for her to attempt a sneak attack with the demon standing between her and her weapon.

“I believe we’re done here.” said the professor, and her voice echoed along the walls of the mausoleum with the power of a forgotten goddess. 

There was a long moment of silence, save for Ingrid’s laborious breathing and the hammering of her heart against her rib cage. The rest of the bandits scurried away—the little rats that they were—once their leader was assimilated, and soon enough, only eight Blue Lions and a demon were left.

“Ingrid,” Dimitri’s voice pulled Ingrid out of her stupor, and her eyes met his. “You seem pretty badly hurt. We must tend to your injuries immediately, lest they worsen.”

She let him pull her to her feet and leaned onto his large frame for support, but her gaze kept slipping back to the professor with an anxiety that resounded heavily in her ears. Fear’s snake sunk its teeth into her skin, and she felt its venom taint her blood, numbing her body and amplifying her dizziness. Would the professor strike her the minute she let her guard down? Would the demon devour her the minute it deemed her useless?

Ingrid’s grip on Dimitri’s shoulder tightened.

“I’m glad you’re safe, Ingrid. I almost thought that we were too late.” The professor stood in front of her, concern etched into wide-blown eyes and relief sewed onto pale lips in the shape of a smile.

The sight almost made Ingrid nauseous.

“I thank you, Professor. It was because of your experience and skill that I made it alive just now,” said Ingrid, with her eyebrows pulled with gratitude and lips tightened into a relieved smile. “I owe you immensely.”

“It’s all part of the job, Ingrid,” replied the professor in an almost teasing voice, leaning forward to lightly ruffle her student’s hair. “All part of the job.”

Her mind flashed to the mage’s mangled body, sick and unfixable, with the professor looming over it, fist clenched around the glowing weapon. She thought of the mage, and the expression on his face when he realized that he would, undeniably and irrefutably, die at the hands of the Ashen Demon. Ingrid wondered if she looked the same when the demon so much as glanced at her.

Part of the job, was it?

***

“Professor, if you see my brother out there,” Sylvain started, grabbing Byleth’s shoulder to steady her. “Don’t hesitate to kill him. He might be of my own blood, but I hate his guts. There’s no saving him anymore.”

Byleth furrowed her brow, but nodded nevertheless. In her hand, the Sword of the Creator hummed with a near vivid energy that Sylvain was almost frustrated. He wasn’t dumb, he knew that the house of Gautier held one of the Heroes’ Relics, but his father had never trusted him with it. What, was Miklan somehow a better candidate? He could laugh.

“Will you be alright out there, Sylvain?” Dimitri’s voice snapped him out of his gnawing thoughts, and he looked up to see the prince, geared up in armour, with his lance at his side. Sylvain grinned, feigning the carefree, chill façade that he’s taken so long to perfect.

“Don’t worry about me, Your Highness! I’ll be fine.” He could tell by Dimitri’s unchanging expression of concern that Sylvain wasn’t doing the best job at convincing him. “Seriously, Dimi.”

“Now, now, boar, if you think too much about Sylvain, you might slip and die on the field,” muttered Felix disdainfully while passing by. He was examining his sword, brushing off bits of dirt on the blade. Sylvain grinned at him.

“‘Lix, would you do me a favour—”

“No.”

“And lop off my brother’s head if you see him?” Despite Sylvain’s natural and somewhat teasing tone, his eyes betrayed his carefree expression, displaying shades of seriousness. The glare on Felix’s face slipped off, replaced with the same concern etched on Dimitri’s face. “You know better than anyone what kind of shit he’s put me through.”

Felix scrunched his nose. “Fine, you ass.”

“Are you going to spread your ‘ _kill Miklan so that I don’t have to_ ’ propaganda to me as well?” Ingrid chimed, resting her head on Dimitri’s shoulder. Her hands were bare, so Sylvain assumed that Mercedes was fixing her riding gloves up, or maybe the professor was off spending her hundreds of gold coins on equipment right before their mission. Again.

“Woah, woah! I’m not _scared_ to kill Miklan!”

“Nobody said you were scared, Sylvain,” said Ashe quickly, like he’s somehow manipulated Sylvain into telling the truth. Which he did, kinda. “But it’s alright if you are, you know. Anyone would be. He’s family, after all.”

“That’s right, Ashe. You had to, um, kill your adoptive father, didn’t you?” Sylvain frowned, and the mood of their previously lighthearted and only bordering on a therapy session atmosphere dropped. All gazes shifted to Ashe, whose face lost its mild smile.

“Yes,” he replied, a slight discomfort twisting his lips and forging frown lines around his eyes. “But it is what it is. You must be able to do whatever is needed for what you think is right, otherwise, what is it that you’re truly fighting for? Sacrifices must be made in the name of that one justice we all seek.”

There was a beat of silence. Sylvain didn’t even need to look at him to know that Felix was scowling, glaring holes into Ashe’s skull. Dimitri and Ingrid remained wordless. He could only imagine what kind of thoughts drowned out all sense of reason in Felix’s mind, memories of scratchy chicken scrawl or frivolous and loopy handwriting etching out words of shallow condolences spilling off of parchment sheets. He could remember Felix yelling at his father, bellowing words of _I will not end up like Glenn; I am not just another one of your soldier’s body to add to this war, one that I did not decide to live through; Do you not realize that you still have another son, right in front of you?_ Of Sylvain whispering hushed words, of children’s promises to a mourning friend, arms wrapped around his small figure as if he would never let go.

“Well,” started Sylvain, moving closer to the archer to ruffle his hair. Sylvain felt himself slip back into the laidback facade that he’d spent so long perfecting, “let’s chill the fuck out there, buddy.”

Ingrid snorted. “Goddess, Sylvain, you’re a catastrophe, is what you are.”

Ashe frowned. “What? I was just being —”

“Line up, students! It’s time to go.” Byleth’s voice rang out and her orders rippled among the students, causing them to wrap up their conversation with a little ribbon and force themselves onto the frontlines. Felix bumped into him, and Sylvain flashed him a grin. Felix scowled.

“Don’t die, bastard.”

“Wouldn’t imagine it, my love.”

“Nevermind. I’ll kill you instead.” Felix’s face somehow darkened, and Sylvain became acutely aware of his sharp sword, glinting from the iron’s metallic sheen. He took a step away, standing closer to Ingrid.

-

“Miklan! How dare you,” Sylvain gritted out, hand over his bleeding shoulder in an attempt to erase the pain, “how dare you?! Hand over the damn Hero’s Relic!”

“Never,” Miklan’s grip on the Lance of Ruin tightened, yet the weapon didn’t do so much as thrum with a muted energy. “It was supposed to be _mine_ , and you - you! You ruined everything! You fucker!”

From the corner of his eye, he saw Mercedes cast a healing spell on Felix, then Sylvain’s gaze met Miklan again. He could hear Annette and Ashe keeping the reinforcements away, but he knew that they wouldn’t hold forever. He needed to do something, anything, to end it all now. “I’m sick of you blaming me for everything— of you hating me for having a fucking Crest that I didn’t ask for.”

Then there was a sudden crack in the air, and a nearly overwhelming heat flooded their surroundings. Sylvain shut his eyes, gritting his teeth. It almost burned his wound, sending flashes of pain from his wounded left shoulder. He hissed. What was happening? The blinding light faded from his vision, and all he could see was the professor wielding the Sword of the Creator, the weapon itself glowing with an almost deafening energy, and Miklan, gasping and groaning on the floor, crimson tainting the floors of the tower.

“Pro...fessor…?” Dimitri called out weakly, from his curled little figure on the ground, several feet from Sylvain’s left. Their teacher did not respond; she simply turned her head, face expressionless as if she hadn’t just struck down his brother. Sylvain did not know what to say.

“Let’s hurry. We don’t know if— or when— enemy reinforcements might come. Stay vigilant.” Her gaze held no remorse or any indication of pity, and Sylvain was brutally reminded of the time Annette had come to him, the day after their first mission with Byleth as their professor, telling him her worries about their teacher’s apparent lack of human compassion. Sylvain had brushed it off at the time, feeding excuses of her being an ex-mercenary, yet now, hunched over the back of his horse, he wondered if maybe she was right this entire time. 

“Nghh…” Sylvain looked back at Miklan’s groaning figure, and he slid off his horse. Every step he took towards his brother was weighted and reluctant as if Miklan might suddenly jump at him, but he didn’t; he stayed on the ground, hands over his wounds as if it would stop the bleeding. Sylvain almost pitied him— _almost_.

“I’m sorry it had to end this way, Miklan.” Sylvain carefully pried the Lance of Ruin from his brother, and rose the weapon in the air. It thrummed with energy, settling comfortably in the hands of a compatible Crest— something that Miklan was never able to achieve. “I only wished you to see me as your brother.” 

And he struck down, the blade slicing the flesh of the man he’d never been able to call his brother— the man he’d only ever wished to look at him with something resembling familial love. Sylvain turned his back, facing his classmates, but his gaze stayed on the professor. She looked at him with the same expressionless face as always, and the ghost of a smile flickered on her lips before she turned and demanded that everyone exit the tower, and to eliminate any remaining thieves if encountered.

Maybe Annette was right, but what did it matter anymore? They were all the same: hyenas attacking in packs, scrambling for survival. After all, he thought, glancing at the Hero’s Relic in his hands, tainted with the blood of his kin, it is only the survival of the fittest. What does it matter if someone doesn’t feel remorse?

***

Out of eight lions, Ashe had always thought of himself to be the runt. In the end, he was still a commoner with enough luck to have scored himself a spot in the Academy. He could try to convince himself otherwise, but the hard truth was laid out for anybody with eyes to see: a thief lucky enough to have been caught by a sensible lord that had the decency to take him under his wing rather than killing him on the spot.

Of course, Ashe never had the courage to voice these thoughts out loud, always afraid that he would only receive confused stares in return, that he would be told, “ _Well, what does it matter? You’re here right now, aren’t you?_ ” The rational part of Ashe’s brain would agree wholeheartedly, but insecurities muffled it all, turning his brain to entangled black lines.

On certain nights, where the sky was so dark he couldn’t tell where he ended and where the vast world began, he would question if he really deserved to be there. Evidently, there had to be so many more eligible teens across Fódlan that would’ve fit the Officer’s Academy portrait of a student better, more so than Ashe, yet they chose _him_. He could take it as a compliment, that whatever administration working behind the scenes thought of him as tragic enough to take in, that he was a diamond in the rough worth polishing.

“You should have more confidence in yourself, Ashe,” Annette told him when he scrapped together enough wit to voice his concerns, when Ashe was assigned cooking duty and Annette was simply there to accompany him. “You’re just as skilled as the rest of us. Besides, you’re here to learn— we all are. It’s okay to make mistakes sometimes.”

A seething comment tasted like venom on his tongue, threatening to escape and carrying a bitter “ _But nobody would expect one from Golden Girl Annette, right?_ ” but he swallowed it down and smiled appreciatively. “I suppose you’re right. However, I just can’t help it. Seeing you all, it’s like you guys were meant to be here, but I’m…”

“ _Also_ meant to be here,” whispered Annette softly. She had a sad smile on her lips. “Ashe, you belong here just as much as the rest of us.” She nudged an elbow into his side. “C’mon, chin up, buddy!”

Ashe smiled. “Thanks, Annette.”

Later that night, as he cleaned his dishes and Annette had long retreated back to her room, Ashe had to bite back the urge to throw a plate against the wall. Something tugged at his gut, warm and uncomfortable. How could she possibly understand? She was born with a Crest, with a land to call her own and, undoubtedly, a Hero’s Relic to be earned as a family heirloom—she might as well have been born cradling a silver spoon.

Ashe clenched and unclenched his fists before taking in a deep breath. No, what use would there be in getting angry? Sure, he’d been unfortunate his entire life, but that didn’t mean he didn’t deserve his spot in the Academy. He worked hard, and Lonato must’ve fought tooth and nail for him to be in that uniform, rather than some stuck-up, rich and tragic heir of some far-off House.

The reflection of a knife showed uncertain eyes. Ashe sighed and picked up the wet rag. Surely, he could spend hours lamenting over his own insecurities, but he’d have to reserve that for later; now, there was a pile of dirty dishes waiting to be cleaned.

-

“Professor, I was wondering if I could study a bit more on flying,” Ashe told Byleth, standing in front of her desk as the rest of the lions exited the classroom. It was a thought that’d been floating in the back of his mind for the past few weeks, but he’d never been able to muster up enough courage to actually voice it aloud. “I-I know you think it would be more beneficial for the team if I were to move by horse, but strategically, I believe that— ”

“No.”

Ashe’s heart plummeted as if it had been shot out of the sky. “P-pardon?”

“I said, no.” The professor said curtly. She propped her elbows on her table and rested her chin on her palms. Her gaze made a chill run down his spine. “Tell me, Ashe, what would happen if an archer unit found your location and sent a storm of arrows your way? How would you deflect those arrows if all you have is a mere bow?”

Ashe shifted his weight to his right leg. His grip on his books tightened. “Um— ”

“On the back of a pegasus or wyvern, your aim is sure to be unstable,” continued the professor, “and a missed arrow could potentially be fatal. Would you be willing to bear that responsibility?” She tilted her head, and her expression softened just a fragment. She sighed. “Ashe, you’re one of my best marksmen, but I just don’t see it as possible for you.”

Ashe felt as if he couldn’t breathe. The venom from earlier crawled up his throat, and he spat out, “Yet you’ve given your permission for Ignatz and Bernadetta.”

He wanted to bite the words back into his mouth and choke on them. Certainly, when he’d found out about Bernadette being allowed to ride a pegasus a few days ago, envy burned hot in his stomach; what would make _her_ so much more capable than him? Other than a fancy Crest in her blood, they were evenly matched in terms of skill. “I understand that I might not be as flashy or strong as someone else, but as an archer, I can stand my ground and, might I say, better than most! So _why_ — ”

“That’s enough, Ashe.” The professor’s voice came out harsh, and Ashe’s mouth sewed itself shut. What was he thinking, letting his anger take ahold of himself like that? He’d always kept a polite smile on his face, voice tucked away and emotions bottled in a glass jar. He’d learned to be respectful to all authority ever since he was taken in by Lonato and he’d never once questioned the professor nor her ideas, so why on earth had he been so worked up? The professor stood. “It was— ”

“Nevermind. Forget about it, Professor.” Ashe shook his head and took a step back. He plastered on a closed mouth smile before turning his back. “Forget I said anything.” And he ran out of the classroom.

“For someone with a lot of insecurity issues, I certainly don’t have a problem being entitled to things,” he said under his breath, walking briskly to the training grounds, where Felix was undoubtedly hacking some poor dummy to shreds— he had a tendency to sprint there as soon as free time started, which, usually, Ashe couldn’t possibly fathom why, but with a pulsing heat in his bones, he started to understand.

The professor was an enigma that Ashe never bothered to try and solve. To him, she was a figure of authority: her word was definitive, and there was never a way to try and go around it. But, arrow nocked and settled comfortably between his fingers, Ashe wanted a hole to open up beneath her and for the goddess to swallow her into the earth.

He figured it didn’t happen, but the extra practice was nice.

-

“P-professor?” Dimitri took a hesitant step forward, arms outreached to his teacher, from Ashe’s left. All Blue Lions stood rooted in their spot, wordlessly—or rather, at a loss of words. “Are you alright?”

“You are not the only one to have lost a parent, Dimitri,” Byleth spoke, and although her face remained passive, there was an icy undertone to her voice, jagged and freezing. In her hands, the Sword of the Creator. In her eyes, a raging fire. At her feet, the corpse of Kronya, her back marked with slashes in the shape of an ‘x’.

Ashe shuddered. He felt a sudden chill crawl up his arms, goosebumps sprouting like wildfire. He’d never quite seen the professor like this before: horrifyingly still, void of all motion, yet with an internal savage swirl of emotions that blew up in size. Something grasped at Ashe’s stomach.

Slowly, she turned and sheathed her sword. The tense silence was thick, almost suffocating. Eight little lions stood only a few feet away, and yet it felt as if entire worlds were placed between them. Ashe had always known there was an uncrossable bridge between them and the professor, but it had never seemed as intimidating and grand as it did now.

He shouldn’t say it, but there was something striking in Byleth’s expression that felt violent and dangerous—the wrath of a god and the ruthlessness of a mercenary. Ashe’s body felt frozen. He’d seen people being killed before, even partaking in it, but there was an element so chilling in seeing his professor strike down the one person who’d killed her father, an act of vengeance that felt so incredibly raw and emotional that Ashe almost felt as if he should avert his gaze. He couldn’t feel his fingers. He so desperately wanted to grip his bow, as an anchor of safety. (But why would he need it? After all, isn’t he safe, with the professor here?)

“Mission’s over. Let’s go.” Her voice was once again authoritative, and Ashe was violently pulled back into reality—a shock so glacial that he almost forgot how to breathe. There was something so… _normal_ about her tone of speech that made Ashe took a small step back. Was he suddenly feeling apprehensive about his teacher, despite knowing all along that she was an ex-mercenary? There wasn’t much of a bush to beat around, but the thought had somehow slipped his mind. She herself has mentioned it more than enough times in the past year, yet her horrifying history had suddenly settled down like ten pound weights onto Ashe. 

“Professor…” Sylvain frowned, and even he seemed to hesitate. There was a thread of worry woven into his speech—something that even Byleth wouldn’t miss.

“Please, do not worry.” She reassured with an attempt at a smile, although even Ashe wasn’t dumb enough to miss the tension in her shoulders and overall posture. “My father can now rest in peace.”

Byleth walked back towards the direction of the hill’s clearance, leaving in her wake eight little confused lion cubs. Ashe stayed rooted in his spot, six feet away from where Kronya’s body lay. A turmoil of emotions bubbled up his chest, pushing out the oxygen from his lungs and leaving him almost gasping for breath. Although Ashe had always known his teacher was a mercenary, it had never quite settled in as much as it did at that moment. Was it the remnants of that bridge crashing onto him, forever blocking the path between himself and his professor?

“Come on, let’s not dawdle.” Dimitri murmured, picking his lance off the ground and held it firmly in his shaking hands; the fear of having potentially lost the professor forever had gotten to him as well, it seemed. His words rippled between the other seven, and they all distractedly fell into a step to follow their teacher.

Ashe didn’t move—couldn’t bring himself to. He could only stare at the blood splattered on the grass, slovenly slashes crossing into each other that wouldn’t usually make Ashe feel queasy. However, this was different. This one was the result of an emotionally-driven action by an otherwise inexpressive person. There was something incredibly unsettling about watching someone whom Ashe had seen as a pillar of sorts finally crumble under the weight of a traumatic event. He’d just witnessed an act so incredibly raw that he almost couldn’t take it. It left rust on his tongue and an itch on his arms.

A frigid unease bloomed over Ashe’s skin. He hadn’t felt such a frost since he’d first entered the Officers Academy and he’d been sent into the battlefield for the first time. Yet once again, he lived through the same deep freeze when he stared at the debris of a collapsed bridge, with a cold fear crawling up his throat.

“Ashe. Let’s go.”

Dedue’s voice yanked him out of his frozen stupor, and Ashe could only stare and follow numbly. Perhaps his fingers tightened around his bow when they approached the professor, but Dedue made no action to renounce it. 

Despite the warmth of the sun settling into his pale skin, Ashe hadn’t ever felt as frigid as he did when he stared at the professor’s lime hair. He felt as though frost coated the walls of his lungs, and with every breath he took, his temperature dropped further into the negatives. How was it that this cold fear has him in such a vice grip? Has his faith not once again been restored when the professor held him tight and checked for any injuries?

Ashe has started to ignore the freezing fear whenever the professor so much as crossed his field of vision. What else could he possibly do, when the closest thing to a demon smiled at him and lead him back to the safety of his own room? What if he denied its hospitality and it would react in a way similar to the wrath of a goddess?

What could someone like him do to protect himself against something of such might and wrath? Of such unpredictability and prestige?

***

Dimitri had become a monster. There was no beating around the bush; he’d become the very thing that he had tried to suppress for so long, and he couldn’t help but think of Felix whenever he caught his own reflection in a body of water, and his snarls of ‘ _boar_ ’. Oh, if he could see him now! Would he grin maniacally and boast about how he’d been right this entire time, or would he avert his gaze from the pitiable animal that Dimitri had become?

What would the professor say, if she lived long enough to see his scarred face and all the reds that taint his body in such a way that is reminiscent of watercolour on a canvas? Would she shy away in disgust and demand that he repent for the sins he’d committed? Would she join his cause and brandish the Sword of the Creator, fighting in the name of a vague and ambiguous justice—the one that he seeks so desperately? Would she hold him tightly in her arms and ask for forgiveness for having abandoned him, whispering promises that would remind him of a fateful night under the shadow of the Goddess’ Tower?

Would he believe her and grant her the forgiveness that she neither needed nor deserved?

Dimitri shook his head; there was no use lamenting over what he’d lost. He had only one goal in life, and a dead professor was never going to change anything in the grand scheme of things.

His breathing stilled: there was someone climbing the stairs, the ones leading to none other than him. He could almost scoff. Have these bandits really learned nothing? The skeleton of Garreg Mach no longer held anything of value, so why would they risk their lives entering when they knew it contained a savage guard dog? 

Dimitri made no move. The footsteps were light, yet the unmistakable sounds of heels clicked against stone bricks and echoed in the otherwise silent tower. Whoever made the unfortunate mistake of entering the abandoned monastery would soon come to regret their actions. His grip on his lance tightened when the footsteps approached him and then ceased entirely. The intruder was but a mere meter away from him.

He let a moment pass before finally sparing a look at them.

Dimitri’s first thoughts ripped him violently out of his body and pulled him back into the mind of Faerghus’ seventeen-year-old prince, inexperienced as a baby cub yet with a lifetime of trauma hidden behind cerulean eyes. That younger Dimitri has been sitting in a classroom, staring intensely at a piece of parchment with a bold, red ‘F’ scrawled on the upper left corner of his authority assignment. The professor had requested him to stay after class.

“Dimitri,” she’d started, standing but a mere few feet away from him. “Do not worry too much about this grade. If you need any additional lessons, I would be hap—”

“ _No_!” The volume of his own voice had surprised both himself and the professor, if the way she had taken a slight step back meant anything. He had straightened himself. “Thank you, Professor, but I won’t need it. I need to do this on my own.” 

The professor had blinked, and her left eyebrow had twitched. “Everyone needs help, Dimitri. It’s part of my job to provide said help to my students, yourself included.”

Such a thing was obvious; as a teacher, coming to the aid of students in need should practically be second nature. Yet, Dimitri had only been able to stare, mouth agape. He’d always carried whatever responsibilities with pride and caution, but he’d been doing it alone for such a long time. Of course, how could he forget that people around him would offer a helping hand if he were to ever request it? That the pressure of whatever burdens forced onto his shoulders by ghosts of the past could be temporarily ignored if he were to ever look up and accept the awaiting hand?

Of course, it would be her.

Dimitri had chuckled, bringing a hand to his face to hide the slight embarrassment dusted over his cheeks. “You’re right. I’m sorry for my brashness, Professor. Please, would you help me?”

But, alas, that was many moons ago, and Dimitri was no longer the same man as he was. He was the corpse of a deceased prince from a kingdom long abandoned. He’d given up on his people, just as they’ve given up on him. 

“I should’ve known that one day, you would be haunting me as well.”

There was a beat of silence in which Dimitri briefly wondered if he was expecting a response of any kind. The ghosts weren’t usually ones for conversation, but he expected the professor to be different. Wasn’t she always the one who offered a smile, even in the darkest times? 

Something grasped at his stomach - a lurching feeling that almost sent him reeling over in nausea. Panic bloomed across his shoulders like wildfire, yet he couldn’t pinpoint the cause. Was it the sudden appearance of the professor’s wraith that had come to haunt him? To join the others and wrap her fingers around the fragile little thing that was his sanity?

He always did have a soft spot for the professor, and it was for that exact reason that he deemed it impossible to support the ghost of a person he’d admired so greatly. His father, his step-mother, Glenn… Their presence couldn’t hold a candle to the crushing pressure of the professor. “You… What must I do to be rid of you? If it’s that woman’s head that you want, then it’s what you shall receive, I swear by it! Do not look at me like they do… Do not look at me with scorn in those eyes of yours!”

“I am sorry, Dimitri,” He heard her say, the words spoken as if they were spun with the finest gold, and Dimitri’s world stopped on its axis. Of course, it had to be her, didn’t it? Had the spirit of this Ashen Demon come to haunt the remainder of his days, then he wasn’t quite certain if he would be able to achieve his goals. But this wasn’t a ghost: this was his professor, alive and breathing, standing a mere two feet away from him, _apologizing_. 

He wanted to scream, to shout, to flail his arms and yell about how he never needed her apology; what he needed was for her to be by his side like she’d promised so long ago. He wanted to grab her by the shoulders, shake her figure (was she always this small?) and demand that she turn back the hands of time. Back to the day when Dimitri had handed that witch a dagger so that he could pierce her delicate skin with it instead. There was no use asking for the long-gone days of the Academy; the road on which he stood was inevitable, and no amount of divine intervention could ever change that.

“How… How are you alive?!” Dimitri had the vague urge to cry or to crumble to the floor and bang his fists against the stone. “There must be only one explanation… Yes, yes, that’s it! You’re an Imperial spy, are you not? Sent to lure me out of my hiding spot!”

Had someone put a lance against his chest, he would still not be able to decipher the vague samples of emotions crossing the professor’s face. Sunlight filtered through the cracks between the stone bricks and settled onto Byleth’s cheeks like zebra stripes, appearing like slashes of a sword on pale, untattered skin.

“I could never do that to you, Dimitri,” The professor paused and momentarily, her eyes cast downwards to her shoes before raising to meet his wild blue. There was hesitation in her movements that Dimitri hadn’t ever seen before, and he wondered if he could end her life in just a single upwards strike. “You know why I’m here.”

Perhaps that she was here to bestow divine punishment upon him, and to finally raise the Sword of the Creator and end his life in a swift swing of her arm. For a long time, it was what Dimitri had wished for: the ghost of his professor leading him into the house of Death with open arms and the comfort of a cherished mentor. But, alas, days slipped into triple digits and he started to lose faith in all but his one goal. “I demand that you leave… After all, it’s what you’re best at, is it not?”

A stricken expression cracked the professor’s face like lightning, and Dimitri momentarily feared for his life. His grip on his lance tightened considerably and he could feel his shoulders tense up with a lifetime’s combat experience; his instincts were telling him to _run_ , to hide for his life, but the only person nearby was the professor. Dimitri didn’t like the way his natural intuition was labelling her as a threat.

“Hit the wrong chord, did I?” He let out a chuckle—dry and full of scorn as it was—and leaned against his lance to rise to his feet. He’d grown taller than the professor, towering over her head with inches to spare, yet, even with how petite she looked, he couldn’t help but still feel like the prey of a wandering demon. “Maybe it is better off that you stay dead like we all thought you to be. Will you grant me that wish?”

“I am not threatened by you, Dimitri,” replied the professor, voice low and clear, full of authority that was reminiscent of stuffy Garland Moon days in the classroom. “I am here to assist you, but at the very moment you step out of bounds, I will end your life in a way no different from how I would with a pitiful boar.”

Dimitri wanted to laugh; finally, there would be action in this pathetic timeline that he called his life! Let a wild dog wreak its havoc for long enough, a tamer would eventually come around and wrap a spiked leash around its neck and a muzzle over its mouth. Electricity sparked along his ribcage and fizzled at the nerves in his fingertips. Whatever fear he felt was disguised as excitement that trailed up his forearms, and it was certainly enough to feel more alive than he’d ever felt in the past five years.

He might be a boar, true, but the professor was a demon wrapped in a goddess’ blessing.

***

Dedue was alive—barely, but alive nonetheless. The only way he could protect Dimitri was if he was standing and breathing, after all. The professor had greeted him with the closest thing resembling a smile that he could expect from her, with watery eyes and a tight hug.

“I’m glad to be back, Professor,” He’d told her, voice wavering simply because he could only express so much emotion at once. The other previous Blue Lions celebrated his return with loud nights filled with sticky ale and mead, partying into the dark hours of dusk and drinking with hopes of ignoring the horrors hidden behind eyelids.

When the festivities dwindled to a handful of drunkards and a wandering Sylvain, Dedue slipped out of the dining hall. Here, at least, he could be at peace with only his thoughts and an endless night sky. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a heap of blood-stained fur cross the space between the pond and the stairs leading to the second floor of the dormitory.

Dedue caught up to it rather quickly, not at all deterred by the mildly excessive amount of alcohol buzzing in his throat and making his cheeks burn. He grabbed a handful of the coat. “Your Highness.”

The mass of fur did not reply. It simply stood there, and Dedue was almost intimidated by it.

“I’ve returned, Your Highness,” whispered Dedue, startlingly loud against the quiet canvas of the night. He didn’t expect an answer; after all, who was he to talk unprompted? “And I do not intend on leaving again.”

Once again, the loudest voice was that of the deafening silence. For once, Dedue desired conversation: jests, laughs or sneers, _anything_ to fill the space between each of his words. He breathed out, “I will remain by your side for the rest of my life, not as your shield, nor as your sword, but as your friend, Dimitri.”

The prince laughed, full of scorn and pain that could fill the space of five years that Dedue couldn’t occupy, and glanced at him with his dangerous blue that could freeze Ailell. “Dedue, I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Dedue’s heart stopped, and the world followed in turn, and he could only watch as his prince walked up the dormitory stairs. He reserved his smile until Dimitri left his sight, and he was suddenly alone, standing in the dark with a heart bound to burst at its seams.

“Your presence is going to help him get better, I believe.” An unbodied voice startled him into an alert stance, arms raising—instinctively, after all the training he’d done back at the Academy. A figure enters his vision: an ethereal being that toed the line between human and demon so closely that they might as well be a monster.

“Ah. Professor.” He offered the barest of tight-lipped smiles, because living at the Academy as the sole person from Duscur meant that he had to be careful, even with those who had pulled him out of the clutches of death with a smile. The professor wasn’t someone he could relax around—that much, he knew. “You were watching us.” A statement, rather than a question.

“I like to keep an eye on my students.”

“We are no longer your students.” His voice came out without missing a beat, rough and almost animalistic. The professor was an unpredictable asset in this world of lances and arrows, sporting calm smiles and fake serenity that whatever Goddess of Fódlan would take no hesitation in smiting. Dedue did not like false appearances and he was starting to realize that the professor was a demon hidden under the guise of a human—had always been.

“You’ll always be my students, Dedue,” said Byleth softly, as if reminiscing about brisk Ethereal Moon afternoons spent in the training hall, going over complex drills until their muscles threatened to fall from their bones. She smiled, and Dedue almost felt as if he was looking at the same professor who’d sanctioned detentions to students that sneered in the direction of his darker skin. “Whatever you say won’t change the way that I feel about all of you. I still need to guide you places—to be your leader.”

Dedue wanted to laugh and let all the disdain he’s formed in the past five years to spill, for it to echo against the silence, creating waves against his skin that would spell out the utter ridiculousness of the professor’s statement. Instead, he nodded. “I understand, but to me, you are no longer my professor as much as I am no longer your student.”

Her smile faltered slightly, but her eyes remained dark and empty. “Goodnight, Dedue.”

He remained rooted at his spot until the professor’s small frame disappeared back into the light of the party. The buzz of the alcohol had simmered down to a pleasant warmth that made his veins burn, and Dedue felt as if he was translucent. He could call the professor a monster, a demon as much as he’d like, but he was still a ghost that crawled back from the depths of whatever hell Fódlan believed in.

-

“So, how’s settling back into Garreg Mach?” Sylvain slid into the seat next to him, a plate of various breakfast foods clattering against the wood table of the dining hall. Ashe followed, settling into the seat in front of Dedue, with nothing but an apple and a slice of toast. Dedue wanted to click his tongue; he’s been meaning to ask Ashe to help polish his kitchen skills—after all, they were bound to become a bit rusty after five years. 

“Unusual, but not unwelcoming,” said Dedue after a moment’s pause, and it wasn’t a lie. Certainly, running away from Faerghan authorities wasn’t a hard thing to beat, but it was so much more than simply being able to sit down and rest. Even the weakly seasoned eggs and boiled fish on his plate was so much more than he’d ever gotten in the past five years that he could wax poetry about it. Being among faces that he’d recognize underneath dried blood and dirt; among people that he’d protect to his life’s end, knowing that they would do the same for him, it was certainly better than trailing the battered roads of outskirt Faerghan villages like a ghost. He smiled. “It’s… familiar.”

Sylvain looked at him with wide eyes and an agape mouth, seeming almost starstruck, but the expression disappeared just as quickly as it appeared, and he grinned, “Woah there, buddy, don’t be getting too emotional on me.”

Ashe narrowed his eyes at him. “You’re the one who brought it up, idiot.”

Dedue swallowed the urge to chuckle and the nostalgic warmth of old Academy days. Truthfully, he’d never expected to see his former classmates ever again. From the moment his desire to save his prince roared alive, pushing himself to serve as a sacrifice, he’d already come to terms that he wouldn’t see the people he cared about again. As much as he hated to admit it, Dedue did care for his classmates, as annoying and prying as some of them are.

“Has anything changed since I’ve been gone?” mused Dedue, dragging a piece of egg white across his plate as Ashe took a bite out of a rather juicy sounding apple.

“Yeah, dude,” Sylvain laughed, and Dedue would’ve believed it to be as lighthearted and earnest as Sylvain tried to project it as, but even a nutcase could hear the weight of sleepless nights and bloodied hands in his voice. “Everything’s changed.”

Dedue eyed Sylvain carefully. Out of them all, he’d never been able to decipher the Gautier heir. A man of empty compliments full of insincerity and halfhearted smiles, but with something darker hiding underneath the pale, tight-lipped smirks that he gave so easily to unsuspecting people. He would be lying if he said that he’d never once thought Sylvain to simply be a skirt-chasing no-good, but the redhead proved more reliable than he let on. “Hmm. Well said.”

“Good morning, my students.” Byleth’s morning voice resonated like the first droplets of a rainstorm in a still lake. Dedue’s fingers tightened around his fork and he caught the swift glance to his fingers that Ashe made. The archer looked behind Dedue, smiling.

“And to you too, Professor.” Ashe gestured to the vacant seat to his right. “Would you care to join us for breakfast?”

Dedue felt cloudy thoughts seize him by the throat and smile, as if satisfied to have made him feel disgusted by the mere idea of the demon joining him for a meal. Rationality slid its arms around his shoulders, weak and almost non-existent, whispering, ‘ _She’s saved your life before_ ’, but Dedue did not heed to its words. 

“I've got rounds to do, but thank you for the offer. I’ll see you three around.” The professor offered a wave before departing their table, joining a group of awaiting knights at the entrance of the dining hall. Dedue loosened his grip on his cutlery, lowering his gaze back to his plate. He was afraid that if he dared to even look at his peers, they would be able to see past the feeble walls that he’d built in the past five years and see all the tangled black lines covering his brain.

Sylvain’s hand dropped to the table and knocked on it lightly, catching Dedue’s attention. “So, big guy, what do you think about the professor?”

Dedue had a faint urge to laugh. Unsurprisingly enough, Sylvain was still the same clever boy he was back in the Academy. He’d always been able to pick up on small details, yet chose to play the handsome boy with beans for brains. “You’re perceptive,” stated Dedue in lieu of a real answer.

Sylvain must’ve been grinning, because Dedue certainly heard it in his voice. “Well, it seems to me that you’ve been rather tense around her lately.”

“You’re not wrong,” said Dedue after a moment’s bated breath, setting down his fork and opting to simply stare at the wooden table. “You Fódlaners believe in a single Goddess, correct? In Duscur, we have many gods, but we also have demons. Malevolent creatures with ill intents and corrupted hearts, born out of the collective corruption of humans. I have my reasons to believe that the professor is one of those demons.” Dedue raised his gaze, drifting between orbs of light green and amber. The trio sat in brief silence before Sylvain uttered a low chuckle.

“They used to call her the Ashen Demon, didn’t they?” He leaned back and balanced on the two rear legs of his chairs. “All makes sense now, doesn’t it?”

Ashe nudged him lightly, “Don’t say that as if you didn’t think the same, Sylvain.” The archer propped his elbows up on the table and laid his head in the palms of his hands, the core of his apple forgotten. There was a smile on his face, and Dedue recognized it as the one Ashe had given him when he asked if his adoptive _father was a good person, right?_ “The professor is… frightening, at times. It makes me wonder if she’s the right person to be leading us into this war.”

Dedue hummed in agreement. “Alas, but what are we to do against a demon when we are, after all, just mere mortals?”

-

Dedue had once been prepared to lay down his life in the name of his Prince, willingly and wholeheartedly, but, amidst fire and corpses, he would lose it to the lance of an Adrestian soldier. Of course, no one could save him now; Mercedes tended to Sylvain’s wounds, Ashe and Felix fended off Alliance forces rearing from the right while everyone else clashed against Edelgard’s army.

How could he have been so foolish? After all these years, had he really learned nothing about teamwork? Now, at the whims of a haughty soldier clad in red, and with his axe on the floor, so far away from his grasp, he would die. 

The soldier grinned, unhinged and maniac, and yelled, “Die, Duscur scum!” as he brought down his lance, poised right into Dedue’s heart. The metal pierced through his armour, ripping through flesh and bone alike, and Dedue could only yell so loudly—a roar so deafening, it scraped the back of his throat, as if it would tear apart his vocal cords.

Amidst the roaring ring of pain and agony, he vaguely heard his name being called out, but he was unable to distinguish its identity. He closed his eyes, for what might be the last time, and, like the hushing wind following a storm, quieted. At last, would he be at peace? Would he finally be cut out of this timeline marred by wars and death?

But, he opened his eyes and saw his murderer hovering above him, lance unbloodied. In his chest, his heart beat so loudly, he felt it in his fingertips. He breathed and felt nothing, not a single sharp weapon that could dig into his heart and kill him. Had he achieved the promised afterlife of a fallen warrior?

He blinked once more, and the soldier’s lips curled upwards, almost as if he could barely stop himself from going into a psychotic killing spree. Then, as suddenly as it appeared, it vanished, replaced instead with a garbled groan, and Dedue scarcely had the reflex to duck his head in order to avoid the Creator’s extended blade. The Adrestian fell to the ground, presumably dead, and Dedue looked up to see the professor breathing heavily, fingers tight around the hilt of her sword and a clouded emotion on her face as she approached him.

Dedue hadn’t ever thought of the professor as grandiose, per se, but she towered over his hunched figure, exuding the power of all the demons his parents warned him about. The emptiness in his hands coldly reminded him that he was weaponless at the mercy of this monster, who seemed as if she would strike him down with the force of a forgotten deity. 

“You may have been willing to lay down your life for your King when I was gone,” uttered the professor, slowly, as if the weight of the words themselves burdened her, “but as long as I am alive, you will _never_ do it again. Your life values more than the outcome of a war.”

Dedue stilled, and the world followed. Suddenly, it felt as if the seams along his fabricated heart were set to tear—out of endearment, or out of fear, he did not know. Perhaps he should feel honoured about the statement; he could name countless people who’d kill to be in such good graces with the Ashen Demon, but even he could not decipher the seemingly empty sentimentality behind such words. Was his life truly more valuable in the hands of a demon rather than in the shadow of his saviour? Or was he simply too important of a tactical asset to waste, and the demon could not afford such a loss of manpower?

Dedue felt something strike through his heart, like the postmortem pain of a forgotten lance, and, looking back, he should’ve been able to assign such a feeling to fear. Whether it had been fear of his professor from his days long gone, or fear of divine punishment if he were to forgo her warning, he did not know. It froze his body, and he feared that even the slightest movement would shatter his entire being into ignorable little fragments that would be lost to the trial of time. 

He’d always wondered how, for Fódlaners, only a single goddess could be the centre of their entire world, but crouched in her shadow, he finally understood the weight of her omnipresence, and, in comparison, how meaningless an existence such as his should be.

“You…” His voice came out shallow and uneven. ‘ _Do not control my actions,_ ’ his pride supplied, urgently and a roar in the quiet of his mind, as if trying to force him to utter those words. “Thank you, Professor, for saving me.”

The professor did not smile, but something akin to relief softened her features. She offered a hand, but Dedue refused and watched as she turned to focus on wounded soldiers. Dedue did not move, for fear had him in its vice grip, tight around his throat and chest.

Among murderers donning the mask of a knight, Dedue wasn’t anything special; any other brawler with half a mind could easily replace his shoes, so why did the professor hold him so closely to her heart? Why did she still try to revive forgotten Academy days even now, five years’ worth of moons later? Dedue did not comprehend—after all, Fódlan affairs was never something he was familiar with.

Perhaps, in the end, Dedue will forever be shackled to his role as the student of a demon, but who was he to do anything about it? After all, he was still the outsider in this country full of axes and arrows—nothing but a piece of history that failed to be eradicated.

***

Despite the words whispered by his peers, Felix was nothing more than a pawn in a war controlled by beasts. With any sword in his hands, he could level an entire battlefield with nothing but indifference on his face. “ _You’re insatiable_ ,” he’d once told Sylvain, but now, looking at his hands, blood crusting underneath his fingernails, he couldn’t help but laugh dryly.

“You know, _boar_ ,” said Felix slowly as the shadow of Faerghus’ dead prince loomed in his peripheral, “I’ve been rather lenient of your behaviour as of late, but step out of line and I will have to kill you.” 

Dimitri uttered a hollow laugh full of scorn. “Threaten me all you’d like, Felix, but you will not be granted the satisfaction of striking fear into my heart. Compared to the voice of fallen soldiers, yours is nothing but a nuisance.” Without another word, he walked away, and, for the fraction of a second, Felix’s eyes tricked him with the ghost of a dead brother, trailing behind the prince, smiling serenely as if mocking him.

When Felix had come back to Garreg Mach, sixty moons after he’d run from it, battered and bruised up, he firmly didn’t believe in the supernatural until he saw his previously deceased professor fighting thieves alongside a wild animal. Yet, even with that, he demanded Sylvain to confirm the sight, that he wasn’t falling down the same path as a delusional boar, that the phantoms of the departed weren’t to start haunting him.

“‘Lix, you’re sure you’re okay?” murmured Sylvain in the middle of their sparring session, back against the stone ground and training lance four feet away, voice just a timbre away from the one used in conversations in their beds, half-riddled with sleep. He looked at ease, being straddled by Felix as if they weren’t in the middle of a war. “You’re so tense.”

Felix felt a hand tentatively brush his thigh, and the grip on his sword loosened, the wooden stick clattering on the ground. He let a sigh escape his lips. “I know—it’s just…” Felix struggled for the right words; ever since he could remember, he was never adept at voicing his thoughts in a coherent fashion, or in a manner that wouldn’t accidentally offend someone. “You’d think that the arrival of his dog would make the boar change.”

Sylvain’s expression softened and he hooked his arms around Felix’s legs to sit up, raising a hand to brush away a strand of hair that strayed from his ponytail. When he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper. “I think he has, ‘Lix. Or at least, he will. I’m sure of it.”

“But Sylv—”

“Ah!” Sylvain pressed a finger against Felix’s lips, effectively making him both shut up and scowl. “Trust me?”

Felix rolled his eyes and made an unsuccessful attempt to bite Sylvain’s finger. “You’re a fool.”

Sylvain smiled as if he held the entire world on his lap. “Yes, but _you’re_ the one who loves this fool.” 

“Debatable,” murmured Felix—an obvious lie, of course. Anyone with half an eye could see that Felix had always been the foolishly enamoured one, ever since their days dressed in crisp white button-ups and held hands beneath classroom tables. He leaned forward and pressed a chaste kiss against Sylvain’s lips.

“Am I interrupting?”

Felix didn’t bother hiding his annoyance as his grip on Sylvain’s shoulders tightened considerably. Sylvain, whether it bothered him or not, didn’t make a show of noticing it and tilted his head towards the entrance, where Byleth lurked. “Ah, Professor. A bit late to squeeze in some training, isn’t it?”

“Just doing my rounds for the night.” The professor stayed rooted at her spot, showing no indication of wanting to take another step inside the hall. Her gaze dropped to them, to Felix straddling Sylvain and their training weapons tossed off to the side, forgotten.

“Couldn’t you have just asked one of the knights to do that for you?” mused Felix. Why would Byleth feel the need to do something as menial as doing a verification round of the monastery? Surely someone like her wouldn’t feel the requirement to do such a thing, and, evidently, she was interrupting something.

The professor smiled passively, something so irregular and rare that Felix briefly doubted the legitimacy of the situation. “Old habits die hard, I suppose.”

Felix wrinkled his nose, frowning. He couldn’t possibly count the amounts of nights he’s spent in the training hall, yet he didn’t recall the professor ever checking in on him, or doing ‘rounds’, as she so claimed. 

“I’ll be on my way then. Make sure to clean up before you head out.” She fixed them one of her firm stares that, even after all these years, Felix cannot meet head-on, and left the vicinity. Sylvain shifted under Felix.

“She’s right. We better go to bed before it gets too late,” murmured Sylvain into the crook of Felix’s neck, breath against damp skin, then hooked his arms under Felix’s thighs to stand up, carrying him as if he weighed three pebbles.

After a beat of silence, Felix asked, “The professor never did rounds at night, did she?”

Sylvain smiled. “Who knows? I never took my training as seriously as you did, so I was never here at night.” But even in the dim lighting under an obscured moon, Felix could see the answer in Sylvain’s eyes.

He sighed and let himself be carried to the bathhouse without another word to say.

-

“You know, if you stare any harder at the classroom, your eyes are gonna fall out,” Annette chirped, mirth in her voice as clear as the warmth from a sunny Verdant Rain Moon afternoon. She placed a hand on the small of Felix’s back and asked, “What are you even staring at? There’s nothing in there.” She frowned.

Felix crossed his arms and tilted his head to the side. It looked just the same as it did when Edelgard’s forces charged into the monastery with the force of a thousand soldiers, yet, somehow, it was different. Like his blurred memories of carving a hole into his desk with a knife and failing reason exams were all fictional—made up by divine power and intentions hidden behind turquoise-turned-lime hair.

He shook his head then turned to Annette. “Say, did the professor ever make rounds at night?”

Annette stared at him then raised a brow. “I don’t think so? Maybe? Why?”

Felix waved a hand dismissively. “Forget about it. Let’s get some food.” He started walking towards the dining hall, Annette hot on his tail with pestering questions.

“Wait, hold on!” She grabbed his sleeve and pulled him to a stop, “Did something happen?”

“No, nothing happened, it’s just—” He sighed, putting a hand to his forehead. Was anything wrong? So what if the professor checked upon them in the training hall? There wasn’t anything fundamentally wrong with that, and yet, Felix couldn’t help the chill that crawled down his spine whenever he thought of the professor’s passive face as she spewed lies. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”

She pouted. “Felix—”

“Annette, trust me.” He smiled at her, a sight even rarer than a blue moon, and placed a hand on her shoulder. “It’s nothing to worry about.”

Annette chewed on her bottom lip and, finally, sighed in resignation. “Fine.” She jabbed a finger into his chest. “You better not be hiding anything super-duper important from me, okay?”

Something expanded hot and fast in his chest, forcing the air out of his lungs. Goddess, the absolute _affection_ he had for Annette was almost embarrassing. “I’d never imagine it.”

She grinned, bright and sunny, and started to run to the dining hall. “Alrighty then, Felix! There’s some freshly made sweets waiting to be eaten!”

Felix fought off the endeared smile worming its way onto his lips. He turned once more to glance at the classroom and wanted to sigh in relief, seeing it empty. He’d much rather see it covered with vines and moss than smashed into bits by Adrestian wildmen. Then he made the mistake of blinking.

He saw pale figures, so pale that they must’ve been translucent, and wispy at the ends of their limbs. What should’ve been fingers and ankles were instead trails of mist, curling at the edges and fading off. Although mostly see-through, Felix could spot colour: silvers and blonds for what must’ve been hair; golds and browns covering most of the bodies; and, standing out like a sore thumb was a blue cape draping down the back of a central figure that couldn’t have been much taller than Felix’s current height.

Felix felt as if someone had punched him in the gut.

For all the shit he’s given the boar about ghosts not existing and how pathetic it was to be stuck in the past, Felix almost wanted to laugh. Here he was, standing in broad daylight, yet feeling as though he was watching hell’s rendition of the world’s most comedic tragedy about eight _children_ (call them what you see fit, but they had been nothing more than children playing ‘Grown Up’.) He wanted to point and scream, “Don’t you all see that too?” but he imagined that he wouldn’t be met with exclamations of agreement. Ghosts, after all, only tormented those lost in the past, and despite all his words of carving his own future, Felix let himself lament days of five, seven years ago. 

He blinked once more, and the figures were gone. Ashe walked past the entrance of the former Blue Lions classroom, nose buried in what had to be another ‘heroic’ adventure novel. Felix had the passing urge to yell. Ghosts aren’t real, he told himself desperately, but the words had no real meaning.

He felt a tug on his sleeve and he forced himself to tear his attention away from the classroom to look at Annette. She pouted at him. “C’mon, Felix! What if all the sweets have been taken already?”

The itch to turn around burned. He rolled his eyes. “I highly doubt it. There’s nobody here with a bigger sweet tooth than you.”

-

Amidst blood and sweat, Felix stood tall in a field of dismembered corpses. People might call him a warrior—a fighter in the name of a seemingly unreachable justice—or a callous murderer, nothing more than a reckless heart playing around with swords and spells. Felix would laugh, sneering as he would say, “Why not both?”

A fight is a fight, after all. Why should his cause matter?

Yet, as he wiped the blood of a former classmate off his sword, Felix couldn’t help but shudder. He swallowed thickly, trying to wash away the feeling of unease that crawled along the small of his back. He’d never truly felt remorseful following a battle, but looking at the lifeless faces of past friends made him want to keel over and empty his stomach. Something whispered into his ear, “ _We are to haunt you as well._ ”

Felix wanted to yell, or to raze an entire legion of its soldiers. He spoke, bitterly and full of malice that even the boar himself would turn away, “My life is not for forgotten spirits to rule.”

The voice retreated, undoubtedly to return and harass him later on. Felix spotted Sylvain getting tended by Mercedes, a monstrous gash on his shoulder being wrapped. He let out a sigh of relief he didn’t know he was holding in. At least he was okay, he thought bleakly. He wouldn’t forgive the Goddess if Sylvain had done something as stupid as dying on the battlefield. 

Vaguely, he heard the boar spewing his garbage about killing hundreds of Adrestian soldiers and Rodrigue trying to rationalize. Felix wanted to shut him up; hell, if Dimitri wanted to face the Empire’s entire arsenal, then why bother stopping him? Maybe he’d actually be of use for once. Sighing, Felix walked towards them. He could see Byleth’s neon hair from quite the distance, and she was supposed to be the one handing out directions. If he had to listen to a single person, it’d be her.

Then a figure emerged from behind a strip of wooden palisade, a girl that couldn't have been more than Felix’s own height, holding a blade that was clearly unbalanced and much too large for someone of her stature. Felix’s steps became slightly more hurried, and unease settled into his bones, different than the one from before, yet very much as uncomfortable.

The girl raised her sword, aimed at the heart of a wild and delusional prince, and even Felix had to stop the scream that threatened to escape his mouth. He considered throwing a Thoron, but missing from even the smallest degree would prove fatal to either the boar or his father, who stood merely a few feet from the pair.

Faster than Felix could blink, Rodrigue threw himself between the boar and the girl.

Felix almost passed out. The sword pierced through his father’s armour as if it were butter and into the left side of his chest, undeniably into his steel heart. Emotions raged a storm so fierce that Felix could barely think, much less move a single muscle, and he could only watch as the professor raised her sword and slashed the girl’s back.

Dimitri’s scream fell on dull ears. Felix could hardly breathe. Why, why, _why_? Why had his father sacrificed his only life for a monster wearing the disguise of a long-dead prince? Why had he deemed the life of the boar more important than his own? More important than being a father to his only living son?

Would he too, be expected to lay down his life for this crazed prince? No, he thought firmly, over the sound of his anguish, my death is for me and only me to choose. 

Felix was alone, standing too far to be approached, living of his own free will rather than becoming a slave to royal duties. The Goddess decided that those qualities made him unworthy of being part of a family. He wanted to strangle her with his own two hands, see what she would dare do to his fate if she’d given such destinies to the Fraldarius house.

The professor’s voice pulled him out of his stupor, and Felix felt as if ice-cold water had been dunked on him. She threw a rueful glance to Rodrigue’s corpse, as if it were another inconvenience in her schedule, and said, “We’d best be going now. We’re done here.”

Anger boiled over, washing away rationality. Felix took a step forward, glaring. “Hold it. We’re just going to leave my old man there?”

Byleth gave him an icy look, like she was just noticing his presence and deemed it annoying. “We have no means of carrying a dead person all the way to Fhirdiad.” Then her gaze softened. “I’m sorry for your loss, Felix, but—”

“You’re not sorry,” he spat out. Felix was aware of the other Blue Lions approaching and, as they took in the scene, started to piece together the events. “You’re bothered. It’d be too much of a nuisance to bring him, right? Just another corpse to add to the pile.”

Byleth straightened. “No, that isn’t what I’m saying—”

“But it’s what you’re thinking.” Felix glanced at his father’s body and watched as it slowly turned pale. Then he whirled around to face the boar in its pitiable state, hunched over the corpse as if it were his entire reason for living. “And if it wasn’t for you—” _Glenn would have never died—_ “If it weren’t for you—” _And my father would have never…_

Felix wanted to scream. He wanted to reverse time and kill the girl with his own bare hands, but he knew such a thing was impossible. Do I even want to save him, he thought bleekly. After all, that man had never been a father, and, quite possibly, never truly loved him. He should be happy, really, that such a horrible person was now forever gone from his life. And yet, he couldn’t help the tears that threatened to spill.

He felt a pat on his back and he looked up to see green hair. The professor gave him a sympathetic smile as she rounded up the remaining soldiers, but it was cold. Void of any real pity or compassion. Felix felt as if his lungs were filled with ice. How had he turned such a blind eye to this? Were they really letting this hollow shell of a human lead them into battle? If he were to raise his sword and strike her heart, would blood even spill?

Felix stared at his father’s closed eyes and prayed. If the Goddess really was as amazing as they preached, then she’d listen to this one request: _Don’t let me end up like them._

***

Mercedes was a kind woman; of course, having practically lived half her life in a church, she’s become accustomed to treat strangers and friends alike with both compassion and sympathy. However, she was never one to offer kindness to those undeserving of it. In twenty years of life, she’s made that mistake far too often, and now, standing on the grounds of Garreg Mach Monastery, facing the vacant face of her supposedly dead professor, she found herself unsure. A professor is, by its definition, bound to protect and guide their students, yet Mercedes couldn’t help but wonder what professor worth their money would disappear for five years right when everyone needed them the most?

Certainly not a good one, and certainly not the one she was staring at. 

“Hello, Professor,” she smiled cordially, like the way she was taught by her mother so long ago. “Getting to see you and everyone else again makes having to leave my family feel less difficult.” A statement that, technically, wasn’t all false. Of course, seeing her former friends and classmates was nice, but nothing could compare to the pain of being forced to depart from her mother in the midst of a terrible war.

The professor returned the smile, however stinted as it was, and ushered Mercedes, as well as the rest of the now adults Blue Lions, into the familiarity of stone buildings and grassy yards.

“With her arrival, do you think the war will end?” A voice whispered into her ear, and Mercedes turned to see Annette’s somewhat worried face, alloy blue eyes laced with confusion and concern. Mercedes nibbed on the inside of her cheek; truthfully, she wasn’t quite sure whether to lie or not. Lying would alleviate some of her best friend’s anxiety, but that wasn’t quite in her nature to do.

She opted for a safe answer and shrugged, “I’m not too sure, Annie, but I hope so.” She offered an attempt at a warm smile, despite the feeling of anxiety creeping up her spine like a centipede. The professor ushered them all into the dining hall, which felt so very nostalgic that Mercedes couldn’t help but let her breath be taken away. In the far corner, she could see the spot where Caspar had once carved his name into the stone, claiming that he was now ‘forever a part of Garreg Mach’, which had made Mercedes giggle as she ate breakfast.

“Felix hit me over the head with a plate over there.” Sylvain pointed to a table with a carved hole in the middle of it, near the centre. Ashe snorted and punched his shoulder lightly.

“You probably deserved it.”

“Probably.” Mercedes watched them passively, and soon enough, she was the only one left standing in the hall. She traced a finger over the surface of the table, collecting dust on her finger and leaving a faint trail. Memories of past days were fresh in her mind, so vivid against the deathly silent room. She could pinpoint the exact spot where Annette had burned her tongue on some pie, or where Dedue had quietly said ‘fuck’ under his breath, an act so strange that the entire room silenced.

Mercedes never quite described herself as someone who lived in the past, nor daydreamed of the future. She tended to live in the present and focus on the people who were right in front of her, breathing and alive. Yet, despite that self-proclamation, as she stared at the place where Ashe and Ignatz once had an arm wrestle, she couldn’t help but yearn for simpler times, where her greatest worries were about having enough sugar to bake sweets.

“O Goddess,” murmured Mercedes, bringing her hands together for an impromptu prayer. “May you protect us all from inevitable calamity, and if not me, then please protect those I love.”

The Goddess, unsurprisingly, didn’t appear in a flash of light and guaranteed her life—although Mercedes would’ve _really_ liked that. Rather, the hall remained silent, except for Mercedes’ slight exhale. A prayer to the Goddess was reassuring, sure, but sometimes, she had to take matters into her own hands.

She glanced at the open doors leading to the pond, where Annette and Ashe were squatting and pointing at something in the waters. Annette shrieked when Sylvain lightly nudged her back with his knee, probably afraid that she’d fall into the no doubt freezing water. Mercedes smiled. Surely, if the souls were _that_ kind, then the Goddess should have no complaints about protecting them, right?

Mercedes wasn’t confident with her answer to that question.

-

If she allowed herself to be boastful for once, Mercedes could wholeheartedly claim that her healing magic was in another league of its own. Of course, having spent nearly a year mending Felix’s wounds after he recklessly charged into armoured enemy units before sending him back off into the fight, she’d like to think that she had a special knack for it.

Mercedes was, however, not a miracle worker, as much as she’d wished to be one. She did not have the divinity of the Goddess, nor the physical capabilities of someone as athletic as the prince. All she could really do was cast a Physic from across the battlefield and hope for the best, that maybe the Goddess would answer a nearly long-forgotten prayer in Mercedes’ favor. There will always be wounds that I cannot mend, she’d remind herself, staring at bloodied hands in a near-full infirmary, the silence broken only by the collective laboured breath of returned soldiers. 

Often, on the evenings following the horrors of a particularly devastating battle, Mercedes would find herself not in the infirmary, nor the chapel, but instead, roaming the empty gardens of Garreg Mach, in almost complete silence, if not for the buzz of cicadas reaching the stars above. She knew the guards weren’t thorough when checking the gardens during their nightly rounds, so she imagined they wouldn’t particularly mind if she hung out under the gazebo for a few hours.

It was quiet here. 

Mercedes never quite considered herself to be a private person. When prompted, she would spill a life’s worth of secrets to whoever asked, with nothing to fear. What was there possibly to hide? That Mercedes could possibly been ashamed of?

 _You abandoned your brother_ , a voice snarled into her ear, vicious, and Mercedes flinched. Of course, even after all these years, the absence of her brother had left a gaping hole in her heart, irreparable. The guilt of it had become familiar upon her shoulders, weighing like bricks and lingering in her heart during her occasional nightly stays under the gazebo. 

“Emile…” called out Mercedes in the quiet of the night, as if, from wherever he was in the Empire, he could hear her and appear at the doors of the monastery at daybreak. She smiled ruefully and felt the urge to scoff at her own whimsical wish; if only that could ever happen. She had abandoned him, and her repentance was to live with that guilt forever. 

“What’re you doing out so late, Mercedes?” The voice of the professor nearly startled Mercedes to death. She turned to the source and, sure enough, the professor stood against the foliage of the bushes surrounding Mercedes’ little gazebo. Mercedes could see, under the faint light of the moon, the glint of the Sword of the Creator tucked away under the professor’s belt, as if she had been expecting to run into some more thieves.

“I come here to relax, professor.” Mercedes gestured to the empty seat in front of her, separated only by a circular metal table, and glanced back to her former mentor. “You can join me, if you’d like.”

The professor, after a moment of deliberating, nodded and settled into the stool. She was still donning some armour from that afternoon, Mercedes realized, when she saw specks of dried crimson in her hair. She wrinkled her nose in distaste; after all these years, Mercedes couldn’t stand being covered in another person’s blood longer than necessary. It had become a custom for her to take a shower and change into a clean set of clothing as soon as she came back from the battlefield. 

“Do you come here often?” asked the professor, following a bout of silence. “After all,” she tilted her head in the direction of a nearby flickering torch, its flames weakened and barely larger than a thumb. “It is quite late.”

Mercedes knew that. Her internal clock wasn’t _that_ distorted, thank you very much, but that didn’t stop her from wandering out during the darkest hours of the night for some much-needed peace and quiet. “I do.” she admitted, finally, after a few seconds of hesitation. “It helps calm me down after particularly gruesome battles.”

The professor furrowed her brows and leaned forward, moving to place her hand over Mercedes’. Her hand was ice cold, and it took a lifetime of control for Mercedes to not flinch at the touch. “Are you often rattled after fighting?”

Mercedes avoided her gaze. “Sometimes.” It was a horribly vague and ambiguous answer, Mercedes knew that, but at the end of the day, she was never one to fully voice out her concerns about killing and bodies littering the grass like bloodied flowers. Everyone had always seemed rather at ease with it, so much so that Mercedes felt as if she needed to pray for their crimes as well. “It’s a coping mechanism, if you want to put a label on it.”

Confusion wiped away the concern on the professor’s face as if she’d never once heard of such a notion. Mercedes sighed and explained. “The battlefield is an ugly place, wouldn’t you say so, Professor? It’s full of horrible sights that should make anyone keel over in nausea, but it’s also something that we, unfortunately, have become accustomed to. Going face to face with death all the time— as we do— it’s bound to have its effects on us. Even when this war is over, I wouldn’t be surprised if we’ll never be the same again.” Mercedes shook her head. “Oh, but I’m rambling.” She looked back to the professor, whose previous perturbation had disappeared. “All that to say that when the events of a battle become too much for me to stomach, I come here at night to unwind myself.”

“‘Too hard to stomach’, huh?” The professor leaned forward and crossed her fingers. She had an expression on her face that made Mercedes suddenly feel wary, as if she’d become a prey and before her very eyes was a ravenous lion. “Maybe you’re just too weak to handle it all.”

Mercedes stilled. Of course. The first person she confided to about her little night escapades and she says something like that— something that made Mercedes feel as if she was dead weight. She couldn’t even begin to try and count the number of times she’d questioned her nausea— why didn’t anyone else exhibit those kinds of emotions? Is this what the people of Faerghus really are: stone-cold killing machines? Mercedes had never once dared to voice out these thoughts, not even to Annette.

“P-pardon?” Mercedes straightened. Honestly, if someone had told her that, out of everyone she’d known, she would confide one of her most intimate secrets to Byleth, she might’ve laughed. After all, she’d never been the closest to her; she liked to respect the teacher-student professional boundaries. And, if she was being perfectly honest, the professor had never seemed like someone who would actually _care_ —that wasn’t part of the job description. “Does weakness have anything to do with having empathy?”

“They are our enemies, Mercedes. Why care for people that would kill us in a heartbeat?” There was rationality to the professor’s words, Mercedes realized. She could easily imagine Felix or Dimitri saying those exact words, so there must be some others that shared the same sentiment, but that didn’t make it any less unsettling.

“Because they are the same as us, Professor,” murmured Mercedes, struggling to keep the quiver out of her voice. She couldn’t tell if she succeeded. “Despite the flag they wave, underneath all that armour, they are still human. It makes me feel—” Mercedes shuddered violently, “ _sinful_ , knowing that I might be killing someone’s parent, child, loved one.”

The professor remained silent for a moment before raising her head and staring at Mercedes with an unnamed intensity that made Mercedes’ skin crawl. “The Church of Seiros is stemmed from violence, Mercedes. The Goddess will not punish you for taking lives.” She spoke the words as if she had met the Goddess personally, which, had it been anybody else sitting in front of her, Mercedes would laugh. However, Mercedes had a hunch that the professor was the closest thing to a deity that the world would ever see.

The professor stood, and Mercedes was almost grateful for it. “It’s getting late, Mercedes.” The professor made an attempt at a comforting smile. “You should head to bed.”

When she was certain that the professor was out of earshot, Mercedes sighed. “The guilt I feel for killing isn’t tied to the Goddess,” murmured Mercedes to the night sky. It did not answer; its blinking lights simply stared back at her, as if awaiting a continuation to her train of thought.

There was none.

-

Mercedes had always known that she was not a fighter. She was not hiding murderous tendencies behind her pretty face, unlike some other people she knew. She’d much rather stay on the backlines with healing magic at the ready and maybe a Thunder spell or two, just in case some enemies got _too_ close for her liking. Even so, despite her aversion to fighting, she let herself be dragged onto the field because how could she not, when her friends were fighting for their lives? For a sake that they all believed in? Mercedes would not allow herself to simply hide; she had more pride than that, funnily enough.

“I’m counting on you, Mercedes,” said the professor, pulling Mercedes out of her trance and back into reality. She blinked and smiled in return, with a small nod. Counting on her? To do what, kill her brother? Would the Goddess ever forgive her if she murdered her own kin after a failed attempt at bringing him back? 

“Of course, Professor,” she murmured in turn, distracted. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Annette throw her a quizzical look and a silent question: _Are you alright?_ Mercedes smiled and nodded. Despite potentially walking towards either hers or Emile’s death bed, Mercedes felt startlingly calm. She’s done this dozens of times now; the battlefield was no stranger to her, nor to anyone else around her.

The professor corralled everyone into their starting positions, with Dedue at the front, shield at the ready, and Mercedes supporting their backlines with healing magic. Knowing that Fort Merceus rivals even Arianrhod— which had truly been a devastatingly difficult battle— in terms of defence, Mercedes wasn’t entirely sure she could heal everyone. Sure enough, wounds came in faster than she could mend them, even with other healers in the vicinity.

“Let’s not waste any time. The faster we take over Fort Merceus, the faster we can get to the Emperor and the faster this war is over.” The professor spoke in a monotonous voice, despite the seemingly encouraging words from which Mercedes felt no inspiration. She’d suspect after a year of teaching, the professor had gotten better at public speaking, but alas, that was simply not the case.

Now, Mercedes has killed before. She was no longer the innocent young woman freshly admitted into the Officer’s Academy with open arms and ready to learn whatever magic there was to be taught. It had never brought her any satisfaction or pleasure. The first time she’d had blood on her hands, she’d nearly emptied her stomach after a particularly close call during her Academy days. The memory was so fresh in her mind, she doubted that she’d ever forget about it, not until her last breath. _Maybe that’ll be today_ , thought Mercedes distractedly, staring at Ashe’s back in front of her.

“Annie,” she called out, knowing that her childhood friend wasn’t too far off from her. Just as she thought, Annette peeked her head from in front of Dedue and furrowed her brows. “I’ll see you at the end, alright?”

Annette nodded, a grim look on her face as if maybe, miraculously, she knew the ugly outcome of that battle. Mercedes briefly wondered who would end up in a coffin in that outcome.“As always, Mercie.” 

Battle was never a pretty affair. Limbs strewn all around, blood staining clothes and skin alike, and the stench of corpses never failed to make Mercedes sick, but she knew it was a necessary evil for the murky end goal of Dimitri’s. After all, after everything that they’ve been through, how can she possibly simply just turn her back to those who’d supported her since her early adult years? No, she wouldn’t. She had more pride than that.

After the first few arrow wounds, injuries blurred into one another with every Physic she cast. Mercedes was starting to grow a bit antsier; usually, at this point in time, Emile— no, the _Death Knight_ would have appeared and challenged the professor in his pursuit of a formidable opponent. Where was he, wondered Mercedes, staring at her own bloodied hands that even a million baths couldn’t clean—at last, the sin of murder could not so easily be erased from one’s consciousness. 

“Mercedes,” a low cry, even over the roar and screams of a warring struggle, rolled over the masses, authoritative and just inches away from becoming a growl. Mercedes felt a chill go down her spine, from the very first vertebrae at the base of her neck, all the way to the ends of her feet. Even after all these years, she could recognize the lilt on that voice amongst a crowd of hundreds of yells. “Mercedes, where are you?!”

The thought of this being the ‘end’, for one or the other, quickly flitted across her mind, but Mercedes straightened herself. Sylvain, from his spot on a makeshift cot, wrapped his fingers around her wrist with a feather-like grip and concern darkening the cuts on his face, but she lightly shook him off. He had already dealt with his own brother; now, it was her turn. 

“Emile,” called out Mercedes. She’d nearly expected her voice to crack, but it surprised her when it came out smooth and determined. Her mind has been made up for a long time now; whatever hesitance she harboured had no more place on the battlefield. “You’re here.”

“This will be your last chance, Mercedes.” The Death Knight didn’t seem to be fazed by the use of his real name, which Mercedes took as a good sign: perhaps he still felt some sort of attachment to that name, like it reminded him of better times with a family that cared. _You didn’t care for him_ , cried out a voice with the slither of a parasite that knawed at her guilt. _You_ _abandoned him!_

“But _I’ll_ be the one to save him,” replied Mercedes under her breath determinedly. This was her _brother_ , for crying out loud! What else could she do? What else is there for her to _possibly_ do? After all the harm she’s done to him, this was the least she could do; he needed saving, to be taken away from the clutches of evil. “It’s not too late, brother. Please, won’t you come back to me?”

“Who’s to say I want to?” growled the Death Knight coldly after a moment’s pause. He straightened himself on the back of his horse and pointed his scythe at Mercedes, the curved edge just inches away from her unscarred porcelain throat. “I only bring about death and suffering. It’s best if you stay away from me, if you value your own life.”

“If I valued my own life, would I be risking it in battle?” Mercedes swallowed thickly. She was running a risky bet; one wrong word and her head is gone. How much confidence did she _really_ have in herself, in the bond she shared with him, all those years ago? “Would I be in front of you like this, begging you to return with me? For us to restart? Together?”

Emile paused, and his blade quivered, even with the barest of shakes. Mercedes’ heart pounded in her chest, so violently that she could feel the beating at the base of her cranium, and she continued, “Come with us, Emile. It might not be the same as before, but as long as we’re together, I know it’ll all end up being okay!”

“You cannot guarantee that,” started the Death Eater slowly, lowly— reminiscent of the way a lion stalks its prey before mauling it whole. “In the same way that I cannot guarantee your safety, _you_ cannot guarantee the happy ending that you’re convinced awaits us.”

“But are you not willing to try?” cried out Mercedes, clutching at her heart in fear that if she didn’t, it might jump out of her chest. Under her hand, it pulsated with nervous beats and the grief of lost family.

Emile—even if it was for the briefest of moments—faltered. His hand trembled, and Mercedes nearly jumped with, if not joy, then with the urge to simply whisk him off his horse and back to the monastery. However, whatever temptation he had must’ve disappeared, as he sharply edged his blade close to Mercedes, lightly cutting her skin. “No! Now is not the time for words. If you don’t have the intention to fight me, then I’ll cut you down without mercy.”

The searing despair of failure burning like hot iron on Mercedes’ back and her knees almost buckled with the weight of it. How… could this be? Here she had been, so utterly convinced that she could miraculously take her brother by the hand— just like she once had, oh so long ago— and lead him into a new beginning under the Goddess’ light. She almost had the urge to scoff at the ridiculousness of it all; as if the Goddess cared about her.

“But… Emi—”

“Move aside, Mercedes.” She tensed. Goosebumps bloomed along her forearms at the voice of the professor, who seemed to be merely two feet away from the pair. Mercedes slowly turned her head, and dread filled ice into her veins when she saw the glow of a brandished Sword of the Creator.

“Professor! Y-you can’t…” Her voice broke off, eyes glued to the sword that seemed to move on its own, and her gaze snapped back to the indifference drawing the professor’s lips into a grimace. “This is my brother, Professor.”

“I’m well aware, Mercedes,” started the Ashen Demon, and her sword flickered as she raised it a few degrees. “But he’s in the way of victory.” Then, she faced Mercedes and tilted her head slightly, as if she couldn’t quite understand the devotee’s dilemma. “He’s just another enemy, Mercedes.”

Ice filled Mercedes’ lungs and suddenly, she felt as if she couldn’t breathe. Just another enemy—of course. Why was she surprised? The professor only saw stats and utility; emotional value means nothing to a demon, after all. She vaguely had the urge to laugh, if she didn’t feel like throwing up. “You… you can’t…”

Mercedes scrambled to stand between the professor and Emile, despite her limbs being full of sand. Opposing the professor, and, by association, the very cause that they sacrificed so much for. Mercedes must’ve been crazy. “You can’t kill him, Professor. I won’t allow it.”

For a split second, the professor’s eyes narrowed, and Mercedes felt a chill go straight down her spine, from the base of her skull to the very end of her coccyx. Facing a demon, Mercedes realized she was powerless; after all, she did not have the Goddess’ blessing, nor did she have the resolve of a true murderer.

The professor’s grip on the hilt of her sword tightened, and her gaze felt like it could level a forest. “Move, Mercedes, for if I do not kill him now, then he will come back and claim more lives—possibly yours.” Then, like lightning splitting the sky in half, emotion weakened her resolve and cracked her hard stare. “And that is a sacrifice that even I could not cope with.”

Mercedes wanted to scream. She wanted to disappear and take Emile with her, to run to the farthest lands of Fódlan and live the rest of her life with her brother. The nape of her neck burned; the anticipation of a night full of mourning and grief felt like needles along her skin.

Mercedes can’t quite remember the exact moment her knees buckled from beneath her, but the cold stone raised the hairs on her legs. The clicking of the professor’s heels against the bricks were hammer strikes on Mercedes’ skull, and she raised her head.

The planet’s rotation slowed down monumentally as the Sword of the Creator whipped past her eyes and painted her vision with crimson. The Death Knight— no, _Emile_ fell from atop his horse and landed with a dull thud onto the stone. A shriek died off from the thorns wrapped around Mercedes’ throat as agony ripped her heart apart—patch by patch.

“Emile,” Tears burning the back of her eyes as Mercedes approached her brother, hands reaching out to cradle the sides of his face. Under her touch, his skin felt like ice, bleeding frost onto her nerves like a wildfire. “Emile, no, no, no… Please…”

Cloudy eyes sluggishly glossed over to Mercedes’ face, and she held her breath. The tips of her fingers were warm with a Physic, but even she knew the limits of magic; a wound like this couldn’t possibly get healed with a mere spell. Emile, whose skin turning into a sickening shade of gray, smiled weakly. “Mercedes… Sister…”

Melancholy seized her heart in a vice grip as a content expression flitted onto Emile’s features. Mercedes choked down a sob— he looked exactly like he did, all those years ago in House Bartels, when he was just a kid. “Emile, I’m sorry.” She closed his eyes with trembling fingers as a blabbering cry escaped her lips. How foolish she was, thinking she could save him.

“Mercedes, we must get a move on,” urged the professor, impatience seeping into her tone, turning the words into a bitter order. Mercedes felt like puking. Her fingers tightened in Emile’s hair, and she looked up to see the professor wiping off blood from her blade.

What a cruel joke. Mercedes had prayed for protection for her loved ones, and all the Goddess offered was a demon with a stone heart. “Professor, you—”

“Ah, has the Death Knight been dealt with?” Dimitri halted to a stop beside the pair, and Mercedes briefly wondered how she could have possibly not heard the hooves of his horse. She stared at him as he smiled at the professor. “I believe that’s the last of them. We’ve managed to secure Fort Merceus. Well done.”

‘ _Well done_ ’? Mercedes stayed silent as the professor and Dimitri walked off to join the others, and she removed Emile from her lap. Mourning would have to wait, she supposed, staring at Emile’s wound, but still, even with that fact, she couldn’t help the tears slipping down the curve of her cheek.

The Goddess must be vile, Mercedes decided, if she had chosen to bless a monster.

***

Dawn passed, and Byleth stares at her reflection in the archbishop quarters— _her_ quarters. Her eyes caught onto movement from outside her window; a stray spell from Annette’s Reason lessons burst into flickers of fire that curled to form a flower. Even from her elevation on the third floor, the heat of the spell warmed the fingertips curled around the hilt of her sword. Slowly, her gaze drew back to the mirror.

In her archbishop attire, she could hardly recognize herself—her, head of the Church, when she had barely known of its existence for almost all her life? What an absurd idea. But, despite the terrifying aspect of being the role model and source of inspiration for people all of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, Byleth, surprisingly, felt as ease.

At last, she had students who trust her, and care for her. Students that have courageously fought and won a war by her side. Students that, no matter what, would be able to devote themselves to a cause with her at the head of the operation, fully trusting her intuition. How could she possibly let them down?

Affection bloomed like purple aconite in her lungs, and Byleth smiled at her reflection.

**Author's Note:**

> big thanks to [penny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fellstars) for beta-ing!!!! go check outtheir fics they're super duper talented mwah!!! if u made it all the way here than thank u sm!!!! here's my [twitter](https://twitter.com/akaaqshi) !!!


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